House of Bennetts

Aahhh. The researching phase. I have pretty much decided to paint the interior and exterior of our metal front door black.... Scratch that. I did paint the door. ~~I think it will~~ It totally does pop against the white house and ~~will~~ is absolutely going to eventually lead to black shutters and trim for a classic look. Figuring out how/the right way to paint the front door has led me down the following path of research:

First, these four tips.
Second, thinking of using Rustoleum's clean metal primer since I can prime the frame with that stuff as well.

In the end, my research stopped there because I stopped into Sherwin Williams, told them about my project, and bought this paint in high gloss black.

The paint was about $17 because of their 20% off sale. I went and grabbed one of my standard short handle brushes (HD or Sherwin Williams carry them and they have a blue rubber handle) and a 2 pack of door rollers. I ended up not doing a primer and instead sanding the doors down with 80 grit and then 220 grit paper. The Sherwin dudes assured me it wouldn't need primer.

Here's the door getting prepped for her remodel. I don't hate the outside color since it is pretty darn close to our wedding colors, but it didn't even match the trim... So it got the axe.

You can just imagine how I feel about this poop brown interior color... let's say it falls somewhere between hate and LOATHE.

I started by painting the squares on the door (I am sure they have some sort of technical name) with my short handle brush.

I then rolled on a thin-ish coat of the paint with, well, my roller.

As you can see, the coverage was, errr, not coverage. It was super spotty and I started to get worried. Then I remembered reading somewhere in the blogosphere that there comes a point in every dark color painting transition where you panic. Cue panic. So instead of waiting the recommended 4 hours (!) for a second coat, I waited about 25 minutes and did another thin quick rolly job. Needless to say after coat 1.5 I started to feel better.

I was still pretty concerned about the brush strokes that you could see in the picture above. So, I waited 2.5 hours (long enough I tell ya) and did a solid second coat. In the end, the door got about 3 coats of paint and I just think she looks marvelous.